Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
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A couple of weeks ago, if not before we went on break, we were discussing that I would say ten years ago, when we all watched the hit indie movie Five Hundred Days of Summer. We all got it wrong, and we're here to number one apologize for our misdemeanors. A number two set the record straight. This is also prompted by a listener question we got via the DMS. It's Flex and Frooms on Instagram. Any questions you have please feedback advice queries go to the Instagram DM. It'll
be siphoned by producer Mickey. She'll bring us the questions. It'll reach us. I promise you don't get trapped in our personal dms to waste lands. So listener says, oh my god, please dissect five hundred Days of Summer.
I need this explanation.
I've always felt so many things about this movie and often think of it in life. Like producer MICHAELA, I want a deep analysis flex and Room style. Please ps, you guys are the absolute best thing since Slice Spread.
Look I hear you. And for that reason, I've actually done some research. I fully not only.
Did research notes notes, I haven't worked a day in my life since twenty ten. But for this, I said, I can do some research, all right. So five to Day's with Summer A funny, seductive, surprisingly honest dramaticization.
So you say it anyway, is this your words or rotten tomato vibes?
We're starting rotten tomato.
We got to meet Okay, dramatization, dramamatization, Jay too much of the ways we subject ourselves into incompatible love, I said, this is it. So from the beginning, the story in itself tells us that the movie is not a love story. And that's the thing that by the end, how you feel about it that should remain center in your brain. It's not a love story. It's not meant to be two people meet each other, they fall in love, it
works out. It's meant to be two people people who are living a very similar life to the rest of us, experience something and we get to see it like a mirror. Right from the beginning, Summer, the woman protagonist says she doesn't want to be in a relationship. From the beginning, Tom, the man protagonist, is head over heels for her. She's everything he could have ever wanted. They have the same interest.
She's loose and fun and free, cool girl. The movie goes on and shares their five hundred days of incompatibility all the ways, where he goes on to essentially hate her by the end for not agreeing to be in love with him and for not agreeing to a committed monogamous relationship. By the end, she's engaged to a whole new guy. We paint her the villain, we paint him the nice guy, and life moves on after ten plus
years of existing. I've come on record to say Tom is all of us, a nice guy, deeply flawed, and would prefer that we sent his wants over the reality of a situation that requires two people to be compatible for.
It to work.
Summer is someone who set a boundary, who provided context and presumed, because she had provided context, that she could behave in any which way and would not be held accountable for what she first said. So, yeah, she said she wanted to be single and proceeded to kiss him every other day.
She said what she said.
Now you know how for the past I would say eight weeks now. A core theme of what I've been trying to discuss on our show is the way that misogyny is so insidious and it erodes at our ability to look at anything objectively because somehow, some way, a woman is often painted as the person who is uninformed, annoying, annoying, crosses the line, doesn't know what she's doing, la la la la. And this man, we've infantialized him by saying, well,
well like he no, okay. It's so much more so, as I was reading through the wiki trying to remind myself what the movie was about, so many glaring I don't want to call them red flags, but glaring instances of incompatibility show up from the very beginning that we refuse to acknowledge. Like I said before, Tom ignores everything
about Summer that doesn't fit into his delusion. Right, So in his head, he's like, we're perfect for each other because we both work at this same place, or because we get along, or because we can both tell the same jokes. But everything else outside of this he challenges so much. So she from the beginning said she doesn't want a committed relationship with him, and is he comfortable that he says, Yeah, all good, we can do whatever you want to do.
I just want to be near you.
Taylor's oldest time.
Now, while we recognize that she said what she said, I think when people try and defend Summer, they remove her of any responsibility from what Tom was feeling. Right, people say, well, she said she didn't want a relationship, and therefore she is absolved from any pain she causes from simulating a relationship with him, from sleeping with him,
going on dates, having fun. She's absolved, No, because someone should have been responsible for how her actions affected him, knowing that it contradicted what she said.
Really, absolutely, but don't you say that some people just want to go on dates but don't want anything serious. And that's okay as well.
Absolutely, But she's also knowingly interacting with a guy who is hopelessly devoting himself to her with the hopes that she changes her mind, and she knows she's not going to It's okay for her to know that, But then to actors, though she is without responsibility is immature. She could bow out and say, look's actually not that fun to be with someone who won't let me live, who's angry at me, every day, souse, I want to love them.
There's a scene in the movie where.
They talk about She says that she doesn't believe in love or something like that, or that love is a fantasy, and he's like, I disagree. Even in that moment, what he thinks he loves about her is fantastical because at this point in the movie she's shown him so many ways that love is a fantasy to him. He doesn't even know her yet, He just knows that he could like her and he could be excited by her anyway.
Also, there's a bit in the movie.
Where Summer says, I can't promise you how I'm gonna feel in the future when he asks her about some kind of like commitment or monogamy.
But even then he was like, I'll take what I can get.
So many steps in this movie he has or they've both knowingly agreed to this ambiguity, hoping in both ways it's going to go their way, not realizing that something's got to give eventually. Right now, we don't want to label everything we see into neat categories, but we can view this dynamic from like an anxious attached, avoid attached perspective, where the more that Tom leans in it encroaches on
Somemer's independence. She's like, ah, she goes the more time she spends with Tom, is she convinced that she doesn't want love generally, or she just doesn't want love with him, she doesn't want commitment generally, or just doesn't wt commitment with him, because what ends up happening is what she
gets engaged ooh. In the five hundred days span that they've known each other a year and a half, she goes from I don't believe in love, love is a fantasy to now I'm engaged, And of course he's gobsmacked.
Yeah, he's upset.
What do you mean engaged? What do you mean to whom be truthed?
I thought this only happened to our grandparents, you know what I mean? Yeah?
Yeah, do you know what?
And he's like, how is this possible? And she's like, how is it not possible? How is any of this not possible? Like? Were you living in the same reality I was living in when we had this engaged in a moment and entanglement, and you refuse to see that what I wanted compatible with what you wanted. So I went to seek out what I wanted and you stayed pining after me. Damn, another thing I've written down. Another
thing please. Obviously, the internalized misogyny, especially when you're a young person watching rom coms.
Oh, it comes out really really quick.
But I think also we don't consider that we're watching the movie from Tom's perspective, and that man is an unreliable narrator, not because he can't be trusted, but because you've seen what happens.
When you get a little bit, a little bit.
Love sick, a little bit love sick, you see what happens. There's not a lot of people to pull you out. And Tom's an isolated character. There's not many people to pull him out of this delusion that he's in. And also the way that he's painted to us is that classic nice guy because he's not bad and he's not a villain. Why can't she just fall in love with him? Good question.
I have the answer. She does not want him.
God, I need it. Where can we watch the movie? Flex?
Also, I'm not done because if you can see here, there are more notes to come. Also, the reason why I think we the viewer sympathize a lot with Tom is that he reflects these beliefs and these assumptions that we all have about romance that if we get along well enough and we're both attracted to each other, then why won't it just work? Why can't you just be with me? What is the answer to that?
Because it's not always the right time.
My closing statement, yes disguises it is a question disguise as a statement. Is Summer actually a manic pixie dream girl or does Tom just want her to be one because his delusion would have it. So? Is she really a girl that was like, Oh, I'm so kooky and crazy and down, or just a chick with interest existing who's a pleasure to be around.
Thank you, rewrite that history. Rewrite that history. You run a arrest. My case.
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